Patient falls are a commonly occurring adverse event routinely reported by acute and long-term care facilities. These falls may result in patient morbidity, mortality, and even a patient's fear of falling again. In elderly patients, this fear of falling tends to restrict the patient's activities and mobility, which can ultimately shorten their lifespan.
Patient falls typically occur in one of two ways, through the result of external environmental (extrinsic) factors or through pathophysiological (intrinsic) factors. Some examples of environmental factors which may lead to a patient fall include, poorly placed furniture, clothing snags on furniture or medical components, wheel chairs with wheels that do not lock or are not locked before a patient attempts to sit down, slippery footwear, overly waxed floors, electrical cords, and long intravenous tubing curled on the floor. Pathophysiological falls, on the other hand, occur when a patient has a decreased level of adaptation to an internal condition, such as, for example, lower extremity weakness, impaired balance, poor vision as well as abnormal gait and mobility. While some pathophysiological falls have a level of predictability, other pathophysiological falls are non-predictable in nature. Some non-predictable falls include, for instance, drop attacks, cardiac arrhythmias, seizure, transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) or cerebrovascular accidents (CVA), as well as drug reactions and/or side effects. Non-predictive pathophysiological falls, however, only account for a very small percentage of the overall falls typically found at most acute care facilities.
Intrinsic and extrinsic falls can be further dissected into personal risk factors, such as patient characteristics or medical diagnoses, which can be objectively measured to predict a patient's fall potential or degree of risk for falling. Because falls are most often the result of more than one interrelated cause, identifying the risk factors involved may prevent a fall from occurring. Moreover, once the risk factors are successfully identified, implementing procedures to reduce, stabilize or even prevent a fall from occurring may be possible. More particularly, if a caregiver understands the degree to which a patient and/or group of patients exhibit a falling risk, the caregiver can develop and/or match an intervention program for these patients to thereby reduce the risk that a fall will happen. As such, there is a desire for developing a method and system for accurately identifying high-risk fall patients so that a care facility's resources can be focused on those patients to thereby prevent such falls from happening.